"It's an honour to chair the TS Eliot Prize, a pleasure to work with my distinguished fellow judges Imtiaz Dharker and Vicki Feaver, and a nightmare to shortlist from so many fantastic books. Congratulations to those poets who made it and those who didn't, so much of whose work I read with enormous delight and envy."

The T S Eliot Prize Readings will take place at 7pm on Sunday 12 January 2014 at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall. The fabulous Readings for the 2012 Prize attracted 250 more people than the previous year and the Readings continue to be the largest annual poetry event in the UK.

Tickets are now on sale from Southbank Centre's ticket office on 0844 847 9910 or online. For press tickets please contact Katie Toms on 020 7921 0926 or email.

The winner of the 2013 Prize will be announced at the Award Ceremony on Monday 13 January 2014, when the winner will be presented with a cheque for £15,000, donated by the T S Eliot Trustees, following on in the tradition of Mrs Valerie Eliot, who generously gave the prize money from the inception of the Prize. The shortlisted poets will each receive £1,000.

The T S Eliot Prize Reading Groups scheme will enable reading groups and individual readers to engage with the shortlist. Specially commissioned reading group notes, together with three poems from each shortlisted collection, will be made available to download from the PBS website. This year, reading groups can enter a new competition to win tickets for the Readings, a visit from one of the shortlisted poets or a complete set of the shortlisted books.The T S Eliot Prize Shadowing Scheme, run by the Poetry Book Society in partnership with the English and Media Centre's emagazine, will offer A level students a chance to engage with the latest new poetry by shadowing the judges and taking part in a writing competition.The T S Eliot Prize 20th Anniversary Tour - the PBS has just completed a nationwide tour, taking shortlisted and prize-winning poets to ten venues across the country. See the blog at http://poetrybooksoc.wordpress.com.

The Prize is generously supported by the T S Eliot Estate.

This year marks the third year of generous support from Aurum, a private investment management firm which manages funds for charities, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and private individuals, and which supports a range of charities.